


and you're a strike of lightning

by dadvans



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nightmare Before Christmas Fusion, Body Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 07:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16471148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dadvans/pseuds/dadvans
Summary: No small amount of ghouls, witches, and creatures have left curious and optimistic about the prospect of playing real ice hockey in the Christmas League, but most have come back claiming the change to be too different, too isolating, too hard. Zhenya knew this when he came.





	and you're a strike of lightning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maur/gifts).



> i'm going to get a longass james joyce love letter written in the sky for my beta ------, who i absolutely needed but will never deserve. thank you for gently untangling this fic into what it is. 
> 
> to my recipient: i had a lot of personal angst really wanting to write you a much longer, more serious, more elegant fic that ran truer to your prompts, and i hope someday i'll have the wheelhouse to tackle the story i really wanted to write for you. you wrote in your general likes that you were a fan of obscure, crazy AUs, and i think you'll find this one is pretty niche. i also hope the horror in this fic is in line with what you mentioned enjoying in your letter. you gave me SO MANY fun, compelling threads to pull on for your story, and i hope at the very least this scratches and itch you didn't know you had.

* * *

 

 

 

The Magic Man wasn't kidding about the culture shock. The pucks don’t have teeth, the goalie net distinctly lacks spiders to mend it after a collision, and curses and hexes are strictly outlawed in the Christmas League, not that Zhenya has any magic to spare. The ice doesn’t groan and crack beneath Zhenya’s skates and threaten to return to murky, liquid bog, and the pine trees? They never die.

Everyone on both teams freaks out when Zhenya loses an arm his first game.

“It’s fine,” Zhenya assures them as he skates toward the bench, arm in hand, lying through his blunted teeth It’ll take at least a week for his arm to respond normally again and not just act independently from himself, which means he won’t be able to play the next several games. Only the vampire Seryozha, another Halloween Town transplant, seems to be unphased as Zhenya sews himself back together on a snowbank off the ice.

Zhenya tucks a few leaves back into his shoulder before closing the suture, but his fingers hesitate on the burnt orange and yellow. He already misses the colors of home, and every other familiar thing he didn’t realize he would be leaving behind. If he had lost an arm there, he could have just found someone with an electric chair, or used the old one down at city hall to zap himself a few times, get his parts all coordinated.

He doubts anyone has one of those laying around here.

No small amount of ghouls, witches, and creatures have left curious and optimistic about the prospect of playing real ice hockey in the Christmas League, but most have come back claiming the change to be too different, too isolating, too hard. Zhenya knew this when he came and he remembers it later after the game, sledding home with Seryozha. Seryozha thrives in the Christmas League, where morning never comes and everyone has too much blood to know what to do with it.

“You’ll be back in a few games, and they’ll see you belong,” he says. “They used to stare at me. But secretly, they’re all freaks too. They care about hockey more than they care about Christmas. They have more in common with us than I think either of us realize.”

“Okay,” Zhenya says solemnly, thinking about the games he’ll be missing and the hours he’ll spend hiding in Seryozha’s cellar, not knowing what to do with himself. His arm, mind of its own, lets his hand drag through the snow as they glide along, and he doesn’t feel cold at all.

 

* * *

 

The next day at morning skate, Zhenya is wearing a no contact jersey because his arm won’t stop trying to attack anyone that gets too close. From the first, some of his teammates have been afraid to be anywhere near him, but today the only player who will talk to him besides Seryozha is Sid, who still skates a safe distance away and usually backwards so he can face Zhenya while he talks.

Zhenya likes Sid. He’s small for a hockey player, but huge for an elf, and he plays such a complex game that Zhenya could watch him for hours if he wasn’t trying to keep up. When he comes off the ice, he’s always bright red up to the pointy tips of his ears. Zhenya finds him deeply, unsettlingly, charmingly alive in a way he’s never known before now.

“Sore at all?” Sid asks, nodding at Zhenya’s arm, which flips Sid off before Zhenya can pull it down.

“Not sore. Just annoying,” Zhenya replies, and thankfully, Sid laughs with him before skating off.

Zhenya watches the rest of practice from the sidelines, eating dried fireflies he caught a couple mornings ago out of a paper bag. Most bugs can’t survive the cold of Christmas Town. He misses snake and spider stew; he misses cockroach ravioli. Usually, Zhenya tries not to feel too miserable about missing these and every other familiar thing, but it's not so easy sitting all by himself, watching the others scrimmage and run drills. He wants to be out there with them. He wants the opportunity to prove himself, prove he belongs here. He’s got a lurking, larger figure than most of the other players in the league, but that just means he can take on more of them, skate his way through like a flame cutting down candle wax to bury the puck in the net.

He has grace when he plays, Zhenya thinks bitterly to himself as he fingers firefly wings out of his teeth. If he were in the middle of those drills right now, he knows he could out-skate everyone, and for maybe a few minutes they would all forget he’s a monster. If he could control his arm right now, if he could play, he would impress every single one of them. Even Sid.

A rogue puck flies from the ice toward Zhenya, interrupting his moping. It’s only his arm with a mind of its own that has the reflexes to catch it mere centimeters away from his face.

“Nice hands,” Sid says, the only one brave enough to skate toward him and retrieve it. “Sorry about the puck.”

Zhenya’s arm throws the puck back a little too hard, but Sid still catches it. He shrugs with his other shoulder apologetically and tries to smile. “Sorry about arm.”

Sid seems to get it. He smiles like, _what can you do_? before skating off.

Faintly in Zhenya’s chest, his heart beats a single time.

 

* * *

 

Christmas League hockey is faster. For as concerned as Zhenya's teammates were when he first lost his arm, they all turn out to be a little more vicious, a little punchier than he’s used to. Zhenya likes it a lot, loves it even, especially when he’s finally back on the ice and playing with the others.

He scores halfway through his first game back against the Christmas Town Factory Misfit Toys. The guys circle up on him like a strand of lights on a tree, whooping with pride, and: the fear that's dogged Zhenya's step since he came here drops away. Just because Christmas League hockey was foreign doesn't mean he doesn't understand, or can't adapt. It doesn't mean he can't learn and get better. It still doesn’t mean that he can’t be the best.

Hard to be better than Sid, of course, but that’s even better. At home, Zhenya was easily the best whenever he was on the ice, but here he has a new level to aspire to. This is a challenge he's never known before, and he loves the thrill of it.

Zhenya doesn’t score again during the game, and halfway through the third it starts to snow, but those are minor annoyances when he feels like he’s flying. His body is prickling with static, excited energy like the bolt of lightning that shocked him into being. He looks across the ice and sees Sid watching him, face flushed deep red with snowflakes melting on his cheeks, and the feeling amplifies.

Zhenya's not sad anymore. He’s not afraid.

 

* * *

 

Aside from Zhenya and Seryhoza, there are several transplants on the team, all from minor leagues outside the C: Scuds and Whits are two supernaturally excitable American humans from Independence, and Rudy is a tough overgrown cherub from Saint Valentines. Seryozha was right about the rest of their team— a motley crew of mostly outcast elves less focused on their year-long Christmas preparations and more on winning the championship tournament in early November.

The team started out unsure of him, a little afraid and possessive of their game, but they warm up eventually. Sid, who never shied away to begin with, continues to be closer than the rest in Zhenya’s eyes. He’s the elf that every Christmas tourism website makes them all out to be: kind, apple-cheeked, and giving. Watching the way Sid reads the ice and players while moving the way he does just makes Zhenya want to chase behind him forever. Sid's smile is infectious, like an aggressive bacteria multiplying in Zhenya’s long-dead lungs and filling them with mucus, making his chest feel tight.

Sid asks a lot of questions, so curious and well-intentioned that Zhenya even finds himself answering the silly ones, the ignorant ones. Sid wants to know _Zhenya_ , and if Zhenya were to truly be known by anyone, he would want it to be Sid.

“What’s Halloween like?” Sid asks one afternoon as they skated cool down laps.

“Very scary,” Zhenya says, making his eyes go big. “Maybe too scary for little elf.”

Sid elbows him so hard he busts a stitch in his side. Zhenya pulls his sweater up to grimace at the pale skin parting at his ribs, and wrinkles his nose. It’s a minor inconvenience compared to losing a whole limb, but Sid seems legitimately freaked out, like this is something new that Zhenya’s body does. His hands hover clearly wanting to fuss, but he doesn’t know where to touch. “Ah--Geez, G, I didn’t mean to, are you okay?”

“Yes, is fine, I tell you get scared too easy,” Zhenya teases, rolling his eyes. He rolls his sweater down and pulls his gloves off with his teeth to get to the spare needle and thread tucked away in his elbow pad.

“I’m not,” Sid says almost defensively, slowing down with him on the ice. When Zhenya skates to the outer edge, he follows. “Just--”

Zhenya lifts his sweater back up and tucks it under his chin so he can quickly stitch up his side, but his fingers are too stiff and fumble with the needle in the cold. He almost drops it, but Sid catches it in his own glove, which he then proceeds to also take off, discarding on the ice to thread the needle. He looks up at Zhenya, eyes big and brown in the lamplight of the rink, questioning.

“--doesn’t it hurt?” he finishes.

“Hurt?” Zhenya asks. “No.”

Sid sews his side back together with the same precision he tapes his sticks, a little too careful, but tight and comfortable. The remaining teammates they have on the ice give them space, and a few shoot strange looks in their direction. Zhenya can’t be bothered with them or the rest of the world, so taken in with the care of Sid’s delicate fingers. When Sid’s finished, he rubs the fresh seam.

“You’re so cold,” he says, like it’s a surprise.

Zhenya doesn’t feel pain, at least he doesn’t think he feels pain the way he knows the others around here do. He doesn’t hurt, physically. But he aches to the bones suddenly with Sid’s gentle touch.

He folds his sweater down, and Sid pulls his hand away.

“Thank you,” he says, and skates off the ice.

 

* * *

 

On the train to play one of the further-away factory teams, Zhenya finds himself pulled into a card game with some of the guys and winning handily. He’s gambled with the boogeyman for years. Once he gets ejected for winning too much and presumably cheating, Zhenya finds his way to the front of the lounge car where he can see Sid’s curls and the tips of his ears peeking over the head of a chair next to Flower. They’re talking in hushed tones and grow quiet when they see Zhenya, but Flower smiles at him, a bit too welcoming.

“I hear you know your way around a spider web,” Flower says, which is how Zhenya becomes an accomplice in stringing up the opposing team’s skates to the rafters of their stands.

There is no card game on the train ride home, everyone too exhausted after a much-needed win. Zhenya sits across from Flower and Sid again, letting his long legs stretch out to rest between the curled ends of Sid’s boots.

“Tell me more about Halloween,” Sid says. His voice is raspy from yelling all game, but quiet because Flower is stone cold asleep, snoring lightly with his face pressed against Sid’s shoulder. “Like, okay, maybe it’s too scary for me, but what about the town itself? It can’t be scary all the time.”

Zhenya rolls his eyes. “Of course not. Only teasing about scary, Sid.”

“Oh.” Sid goes very pink, even though the inside of the train car is warm. Maybe Sid was too warm. Maybe it was something else.

“Home is very different,” Zhenya says, kicking the heels of their boots together. “More bugs. Less things weird. Everyone is kind of dead, falling apart, but very happy. No snow but like, all the leaves are red and orange and is still very beautiful.”

“It sounds nice,” Sid says. It doesn’t sound like he’s lying. “I’d like to go there someday.”

“We play bog hockey and I’m kick your ass,” Zhenya tells him.

Sid laughs. “You’re on,” he says, even though Zhenya hasn’t even told him about the pucks with teeth yet or how one of the rec teams is just a hoard of angry bats. Sid doesn’t stand a chance, Zhenya thinks smugly, but then he looks at the way Sid is smiling at him expectantly and open, and Zhenya realizes that neither does he.

 

* * *

 

Zhenya still gets overwhelmed with the heart of Christmas too bustling and crowded and full of elves staring up at him with big, nervous eyes. Some of the elves on the team try to get him out of his comfort zone a few times, but Zhenya inevitably freaks out and goes back to Seryozha’s where it’s gloomy and quiet. Sid notices after the third or fourth time, and the next time he asks Zhenya to come out, it’s by themselves and Sid is nodding towards the woods. Anyone else, and Zhenya would be skeptical. But it’s Sid.

Sid makes Zhenya feel the way hockey feels. Excited. Hungry. Like there’s something rushing through him, his black-blue blood pulsing sluggishly under his skin. There’s a better word for it, he knows, but he can’t put his finger on it.

“Grab your skates,” Sid says when he comes by for Zhenya., When Zhenya steps aside to let him in, Sid smiles at the dripping ceiling of Seryozha’s cellar, the melted down candles stacked on every surface, the coffin in the corner, like Zhenya's is the nicest home he’s ever been in.

Skate bag slung over his shoulder, Zhenya follows Sid out into the dark of the street and toward the woods, where the lanterns lining the way eventually fade into a thick thatch of towering pines. The snow gets higher around them; Zhenya's pants are soaked past the knee. Sid doesn’t seem to mind what are for him waist-high snow drifts, moving with purpose toward their destination.

The lake is small, lit by nothing but the full moon hanging overhead in a cloudless sky full of stars. On the frozen face of the water are some pucks and old sticks.

“I got here earlier to set up,” Sid admits when Zhenya sees them. “Thought you might be up for a little one-on-one.”

They’ve played against each other dozens of times now in practice scrimmages, but never solely one-on-one. Away from everyone else, it feels oddly intimate. It’s Sid taking time out of his Advent Calendar to practice with Zhenya just because Sid _wants_ to.

“Afraid I beat you in front of everyone else?” Zhenya asks, trying to save face.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Sid replies. They warm up by passing the puck back and forth, lazily skating in circles around each other. “For someone who comes from a place where there’s no snow, you’re a really good skater.”

Zhenya tries not to preen.“There’s no real ice, so to play you have to bribe witch or like, make weird potion.” He kicks the puck up with his stick to flip it in the air. “Sometimes witch thinks it’s funny to curse ice, too, so like, big hole open up out of nowhere, gotta skate fast, otherwise you fall in.”

The more Zhenya’s come to realize how different playing hockey at home is from here, the more he’s grown hesitant to share things like this. He doesn’t expect others to understand, or relate, or even find the humor in watching your rival opponent get sucked into the bog by some pissed off, half-frozen creature from the local lagoon. But Sid does. He laughs, eyes crinkling. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not kid! Very serious thing, Sid, swamp monster grab my arm, he doesn’t give back,” Zhenya says.

Sid just keeps on laughing. “Guess I gotta see it for myself,” he says eventually. “You’ll keep me safe, right?”

“Right,” Zhenya agrees.Then he bats the puck he’s been playing with lightly at Sid’s chest.

“Oh screw you, I was trying to be nice,” Sid says, still smiling. “You ready?”

Zhenya’s ready. They tap sticks to face off, but Sid steals the puck from him on the third and then they’re playing for real, edging around each other in sharp turns and fighting each other to the stones Sid laid out for goal. Sid is scrappy when he’s on his own and thinks he’s being sneaky when he cheats, but Zhenya is scrappy, too, and he’s bigger. He gracelessly bullies Sid away from the puck with his body and then practically dances away with it.

It gets ugly fast in the best kind of way, the both of them tugging at each other’s shirts for purchase and throwing elbows, but it’s a roughness that runs on skill and disciplined finesse. They’re still both showing off, even though the only person there they have to impress is the other, and neither of them jump ahead with a lead. Eventually Zhenya loses track of points altogether.

He’s never lost track of the score, ever. He loves winning too much. But this is more than that, he can feel it.

Then he’s feeling something completely different: the butt of Sid’s stick kicking back into his mouth, the release of pressure as several of his teeth are knocked loose, his thick oil slick blood filling his mouth. He probably looks like a Jack-o-lantern, freshly carved.

“Oh shit,” Sid says, dropping his stick and forgetting the puck completely to grab for his face. “I didn’t mean to do that. Are you okay?”

Zhenya pushes him off wordlessly to grab at the teeth scattered across the ice and shove them back into his mouth and work them around with his tongue until they find their way back to their rightful places. Teeth are harder than limbs, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s got them in wrong after a bad hit. He runs his tongue over them and they feel fine. He swallows his blood and smiles.

“Look okay?” He asks Sid. He half-expects Sid to flinch away again, spooked, but instead he reaches out and presses a hesitant finger to Zhenya’s teeth. Sid's fingers are red and swollen without gloves, and were Zhenya Seryozha, he would take a big bite.

“How do you do that?” He says, quietly as if to himself. His hand shifts to cup Zhenya’s jaw. “Just like that, you’re good as new.”

“Good as new,” Zhenya repeats, and then finds himself exhaling a shaky, solitary breath as Sid runs his thumb along Zhenya’s fat lower lip where it’s still bleeding. In the cold, cold night, it plumes between them, curious and new.

Outside of speech, Zhenya’s never taken a breath before. He’s never had to. It’s just his body on autopilot, a muscle memory from another life at the stimulus of being touched in a way it enjoys. Inside, the leaves that cushion his rotten organs flutter like being caught in a wind storm, ready to fly straight up his throat. He takes another breath, just to see if he can, before he forgets how, and shudders on the exhale. It curls out of his mouth like an invitation, and Sid takes it as one, leaning in to steal it as his own, lips firmly pressed to Zhenya’s, blood and all.

Sid is softer than Zhenya expected, and he moves against Zhenya in a way no one else has before, sucking at the cut on Zhenya’s lip and humming. When Sid licks up, tongue slipping into Zhenya’s mouth, Zhenya finally gets with the picture, his own big hands gripping at Sid’s sides to pull him in closer so any part of Sid that wasn’t pressed flush against him is now.

It feels like their own world here on the ice, in the places where the wool of their clothes fold together or curl in each other’s fists. The night is quiet around them, hushed by the trees and the cold, and Sid is kissing the iron tang out of Zhenya's bloody mouth.


End file.
